Selasa, 23 Februari 2010

Palm estate is forest

The Forestry Ministry is drafting a decree to include oil palm plantations in the forest sector to comply with international standards in mitigating climate change.

The ministry said it believed the policy would not lead to massive forest conversion into palm oil plantations as many critics feared.

“By definition, oil palm plantations will be defined as forest, but its management will be under the Agriculture Ministry,” head of research and development at the ministry, Tachrir Fathoni told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

He argued that many countries such as Malaysia, the world’s second biggest palm oil producer after Indonesia, had included oil palm plantations in its forest sector.

Indonesia is home to the world’s third largest forest nation after Brazil and the Republic of Congo.

But the deforestation rate in Indonesia is the highest on the planet with more than 1 million hectares cleared per year due to illegal logging and massive forest conversion, including creating oil palm plantations.

Activists have said poor environmental management of oil palm plantations in Indonesia has led to the increase of greenhouse gas emissions.

But the Agriculture Ministry, managing the sector, insisted that the oil palm industry did not relate to deforestation.

It said that palm oil trees covered only 7 million hectares or 6 percent of the country’s total forest area.